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Friday, July 25

Step Brothers may not have a strong plot, or even a grand premise to lean on, but that matters little when Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly partner up to play roles tailor-made for them: overgrown man-children acting like a bunch of buffoons scene after scene. The results are (obviously) high-larious and it makes us wonder why it took so long for someone to write a script that perfectly caters to their talents. Ferrel's in particular have been wasted on mostly un-funny sports comedies for the past few years, although someone hit the head on the nail by casting him as the lead in the little seen drama Stranger Than Fiction (maybe he can succeed where Jim Carey has been unable to, although Carey is fantastic as a dramatic actor, but we guess the public doesn't agree). Anywho, Ferrell and Reilly play Brennan and Dale, two unemployable, ironic t-shirt wearing spoiled brats who have yet to leave the nest (think Failure To Launch, with actual humor and no horseface). When their single parents (Mary Steenburgen and Richard Jenkins, nicely playing the straightmen here) marry and the foursome start a new life together in one house, the two handfuls get even more outta hand...fuls. At first, the newly minted step-brothers are at odds with one another, but then they realize they have a lot in common and become the BFFs they've always needed. You can imagine where it goes from here (he fixes the cable?), but like we said, who give's a ratso rizzo's ass when hilarity ensues. As of now, this is not only the funniest movie of the summer, but also one of the funniest Judd Apatow-related (he's a producer here) flicks we've seen. No big siprize, considering it's only 90ish minutes and not two hours, although you still get stuck with Seth Rogen

Stepping Out: we never watched a single episode of the Patrick Duffy-Suzanne Somers shitcom Step By Step, but maybe we should have considering how superfly Christine Lakin is

Hannah, Mitch, Megan, Jake and Colin. They may not have lives as wonderful and glamorous as Lauren, Audrina, Brody, Heidi and Spencer, but they certainly have ones that are more steeped in a reality more common to us plebeians than what's on display in the plastic universe of The Hills. So who the hell are these kids that we juss mentioned and why should you be watching their problems instead of Lauren's tough ones like which hot guy should she lead on? They be five high school seniors, who run the stereotype gamut from queen bee-atch to jock to arty outsider to straight-up dorkus malorkus (complete with grodier to the max skins issues worser than Noriega and Norv Turner's faces combined), living and learning it up and down in their final year before they escape the Warsaw, Indiana ghetto and head off to college. Documentarian Nanette Burstein (co-director of The Kid Stays in the Picture)'s candid look (minus any drugs or alcohol) at their lives inside and outside the school's hallways is so darn natural and sincere that it almost feels like it was manufactured in Hollywood, complete with a script by John Hughes (see 'Poster Haste' below). High school is such an awful and awkward place to be, even for those of us who had a gay olde thyme, but being reminded of all the bullsheet that comes along with it sure makes us glad that we don't ever have to go back there (although the day ending at 3 could be worth a return trip). While each kid gets their fair share of screen time, the real star here is Ms Hannah Bailey. She's the one most eager to leave John Mellencamp's 'Small Town' life (and boy is it ever, with purty much zero minorities/diversity) behind for good and you'll not only be rooting her on, but probably falling in love with her too. Hey Hannah, if yer reading this, will you marry us me? If not, we'd totally settle for dreamy Mitch

A man with a bag over his head roaming the deep and dark woods. That image is sum SCARRRRRRRRRRRRRRY stuff indeed, but the possible chills and thrills (and recycling lessons) that come with it are improperly used when in the hands of the MumblecoreDuplass brothers. Their latest low adventure in lo-budget-fi, which finds four struggling actors holed up in a cabin fleshing out a script about a bag-headed killer that may or may not becoming to life before their very own eyes (and poor ab-libbing skills), can't decide whether it wants to be a comical Blair Witch Project or a nightmarish Swingers. Turns out it's juss a poorman's hybrid of the two. Enter the theater if you dare, but we recommend you put a bag over yer heard sans holes cut out

A man (François Cluzet, who looks like a French Dustin Hoffman) and his wife (Diving Bell and the Butterfly honey Marie-Josée Croze) go skinny dipping in a lake late one night. The woman gets out of the water, screams and disappears. The man attempts to come to her rescue but is knocked out cold. Eight years pass and the man is trying his best to move on in life without his wife. Then, two bodies are dug up around the same lake where all the shiz went down and old wounds suddenly become fresh again. The man becomes a suspect and at the same time receives a cryptic email that leads him to believe that his wife may actually be alive. So now he's on the run (including the best freeway film version of Frogger since Bowinger), not only trying to prove his innocence, but trying to figure out if his wife still breathes. It's a solid lil mystery that does slow down a bit here and there, but when the final enigma is unraveled, you'll still be putting the pieces together well after you've left the theater. It's no Vertigo, but you should still vertigo see it